


Fire Tattoos

by Self_Indulgent_TMNT



Category: The Brotherband Chronicles - John Flanagan
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Burning, Burns, Campfire, Cooking, Developing Relationship, F/M, Female Reader, Fire, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Knitting, Love, Parties, Reader-Insert, but only a little bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 17:05:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15538968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Self_Indulgent_TMNT/pseuds/Self_Indulgent_TMNT
Summary: Fire had been an important feature of their relationship. It had shaped it, defined it almost.It was by the light of a fire that they had met, sun dipping over the horizon and casting conflicting shadows with the fire on the beach. The fire cast a glow on her skin as she emerged form the trees and made her way across the beach and the gentle wind whipped up her hair and made the shadows flicker. That was how Edvin always pictured her, like she looked that first evening when she sat in the sand by the fire and talked with them, eyes bright and always laughing, with her hair a wind-swept mess, the fire making it seem to be a deep bronze rather than its usual brown and her skin a glowing pink.





	Fire Tattoos

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for me a while ago as a total indulgence but I finished it, which is unusual for me when I write stuff just for myself, and I thought I might as well post it in case someone else would enjoy it.
> 
> I used no Y/N type things, nothing where one might insert their name, mostly because I think it's an interesting way of writing and a good challenge and I enjoy mixing it up a bit.

Fire had been an important feature of their relationship. It had shaped it, defined it almost.  


It was by the light of a fire that they had met, sun dipping over the horizon and casting conflicting shadows with the fire on the beach. The crew had arrived earlier that day and, as promised, the girl who was to be their local guide had been sent to visit once they’d had time to set up. She emerged from the forest with barely a sound, walking over and offering a cheery wave when she was spotted. The fire cast a glow on her skin when she drew closer and the gentle wind whipped up her hair and made the shadows flicker. That was how Edvin always pictured her, like she looked that first evening when she sat in the sand by the fire and talked with them, eyes bright and always laughing, with her hair a wind-swept mess, the fire making it seem to be a deep bronze rather than its usual brown and her skin a glowing pink.  


Two days later they started to form a friendship closer than what she had with the others. She was spending most of her time with the Herons, enjoying having a whole new group of people her age to spend time with. Edvin was cooking some fish she’d brought as an offering from some of the locals. She’d never seen someone cook the way he did, and he was perfectly happy to teach her, finding her far more receptive to such lessons than his companions. She tended the fire while he prepared the fish with his own unique mix of herbs and spices, explaining all the while what he was doing and demonstrating for her. He let her help cook them along with some veg and gave her a taste of the results.  


The next day she showed up with a small bundle in her arms and proudly presented it to Edvin. It contained some local herbs and flavourings, some he recognised as slight variants on classics and others he wasn’t familiar with. He took the birds Lydia had trapped that day and she helped him pluck and gut them. This time she took the lead, telling him to cut the meat into small cubes and fry it in a mix of the spices, allowing him to smell and taste each before she added it to the mix in the pan. They peeled and cut some of the vegetables he’d bought at the village’s small market and put them into a pot of boiling seawater, adding even more salt to the already salty water. Edvin protested at that but she assured him this salt was different, that they took it from the rocks that peppered the edge of the island and as such it tasted different to the sea salt already in the mix. As the vegetables cooked she went through the herbs she’d brought, showing him how to chop, crush and squeeze each to harness each unique flavour before adding it to the vegetables. The sun dipped lower and lower as they worked but she didn’t seem to notice, nor did she seem to notice the growing group of hungry men gathering around the campfire as the smells drifted through the air. The soup was ladled into bows and the meat chunks added into it. The group was practically silent as they ate, with the girl doing most of the talking. Edvin told her that was a good sign, it meant they were enjoying it too much to talk. He’d enjoyed someone else taking the lead for once, someone else teaching him how to cook.  


When she discovered he knitted, curtesy of his so-called ‘friends’, she didn’t laugh like most people seemed to. Instead, she told him she admired that, and that she wished she could knit. She made rugs, instead, breathing new life into old clothes and sacking to make a personalised piece for people’s homes. She did it in the evenings, sat by the fire. Edvin always pictured her sat by the fire.  


They’d been there a few days when she took a group of them into the woods, climbing a hill to show them a spot from which they could see pretty much the whole island, pointing out where the raiders plaguing the fishing community tended to come from, answering questions when the boys asked about particular landmarks or coves in which the raiders could hide. She did her best to tell them everything they needed to know, trying to help them come up with an idea of how to save her home, teetering on the edge of total abandonment as a result of far too many raids. She did admirably, displaying the kind of detailed, strangely specific knowledge only growing up in an isolated area produced. The sky was darkening when they returned, shadows long and the campfire a welcoming sight as the rapid onset of winter drew people closer. Food was waiting for them when the group got back and, with her mother already aware of the eldest’s likely absence that evening, the girl readily accepted a serving, accepting the seat by Edvin on a log as he shuffled over to make room. They’d only known her a few days, but this girl was already a welcome part of the group.  


They dealt with the raiders, temporarily at least, but the winter storms kept them on the island. They weren’t really complaining, not when there was plenty of food and warmth and friendship to go around. They were readily welcomed to the winter festivities, the peak of which was a party for the whole village with food and drink brought by everyone, including the Herons, and a huge bonfire to warm chapped hands and faces already flushed by drink. It was quite possibly the first time Edvin had ever seen her without wind-tousled hair and out of those old, scuffed boots. Instead she wore a dress and leather shoes, with her hair washed, brushed and tied back by embroidered ribbon. The Herons had no idea how to do the dances, but they stumbled through them anyway and sort of picked up the idea. Edvin didn’t even hesitate to partner with her when couples were called for, she didn’t even let him ask, just grabbed his hand and dragged him into the circle. They danced around the fire, movements less careful and laughter flowing freely as the evening continued and the grins on their faces and flushes on their cheeks gave away just how much they’d drunk. The dancing and the laughter slowly dragged her hair from its order and she looked more like she usually did. That was the first time he really thought she was beautiful. It was nothing to do with the dress or the hair, this was just where she seemed to belong, dancing and laughing like this. The joy that she didn’t even try to keep off her face was so utterly becoming on her. So many people stopped dancing, went home or passed out where they were, but they stayed up, they kept dancing. In the end, it was just the Herons (well, most of the Herons, some had fallen asleep), the girl and a small number of locals who remained, singing their own songs in place of the now-absent music, dancing their own stupid dances and having the purest fun they knew how to have. They went until morning, enjoying the feeling of friendship and belonging and simple pleasure they got from simply being there, together. The fire burnt low, the songs faded away. They passed out by the ashes. Nothing was ever quite the same after that. They weren’t just casual friends who’d met because they were in the same place for a while, now they shared an important memory. That party was important to all of them, a memory they locked away as a time they had fun and let go. And she was part of it. When Edvin recalled it he remembered the food and the dancing and laughter, he remembered drinking rather too much of everything on offer there, and he remembered her face.  


A couple of days later, she was back at the camp. No pretence this time, just visiting people she now considered her friends. They laughed about the party and she teased their pitiful attempts at learning the dances. They defended themselves by proclaiming that they had, in all fairness, never seen them before. This was, apparently, disgraceful and she decided it couldn’t be allowed, dragging Edvin to his feet as her victim to demonstrate to them the steps. She forced them all to pair up and follow her instructions and, for a little while, the beach was covered with dancing Skandians as the local girl sang a rough approximation of the music. She was giddy by the time they stopped, skipping back towards the fire with Edvin jogging at her heels, passively trying to keep up with her, questioning how she had so much energy. When she reached the fireside she stopped abruptly, but her feet caught on themselves and she didn’t quite stop her momentum in time. She tipped forward, and for the briefest of moments she had visions of flames. Edvin’s hand darted out and wrapped its way around her wrist, jerking her upwards and towards him. It happened so quickly that the other herons didn’t even notice it. The two of them stood, frozen, for a second. “That was a close one” Edvin remarked. She nodded, a little shaken, and when she found her voice all she could say was “Thanks.”  


Later that evening, when the others were busy on the ship or with chores, they found a brief and rare moment when no one else was looking. He was helping her with her knitting, a skill she’d asked to be taught, sat on their usual log by the fire and concentrating on the wool. She watched the way he manipulated it without thinking, like it was the simplest thing in the world to take this one string and turn it into a garment. She was so distracted watching him that she accidentally knocked off his bag of wool and the carefully wound balls rolled away. The two dived after them, crashing into each other, recoiling with a synchronised yelp and landing in a heap. Then they started laughing. She apologised, he assured her it was fine. He stood up first, offering her a hand, but she pulled him back to the floor instead. He wasn’t amused. She was. She didn’t let go of the hand she’d pulled him down with, pulling him closer to her with an entirely new purpose. He read her intentions perfectly, shaking his hand free and pushing her onto her back, onto the ground, so that the flames were between them and the group, just in case someone looked their way. He kissed her like that, with her hair a mess of sand behind her and the flames hiding them from view. When he pulled away she just gazed up at him, firelight in her eyes and a smile on her lips. Those lips… They were soft and gentle and he couldn’t stop from leaning in again and touching them to his. She tangled a hand in his hair, not minding the sand that rained down on her because of it, just wanting to know how it felt. “They’ll see us” she whispered. Edvin hardly cared. He pulled back anyway, rolling off her and gathering the wool without a word.  


After that one kiss life became a series of hidden ones, trying to find a reason to not be visible just so he could touch her. She was the one who had the idea to take him on a trek, ostensibly to show him some of the wild plants that grew in the woods that the locals used for food or medicine. They didn’t make a big deal about it, Edvin just checked he wasn’t needed the day before and they slipped away at dawn. She did take him to gather some plants, they needed evidence to explain their cover story, but when one of the storms that plagued the island in winter hit she took his hand and dragged him through the forest to a hut. There were a few dotted across the island, she said, to shelter people from storms and during cold nights. It was sparsely furnished, with a single bed, a bench and a table as well as a small fireplace. They didn’t light the fire, they didn’t need it. While the rain trapped them inside she pulled him to her, down onto the bed. He protested that he couldn’t do that to her, but she taught him that there were other ways to make your partner feel good, ways that wouldn’t leave a trace. He didn’t want to leave that hut when the rain stopped, he wanted to stay curled up on the bed with her skin pressed against his. He wanted to stay there forever. A part of him did. A part of him never left that little hut in the woods where he realised he was in love with the girl with the wind always in her hair and the fire always in her eyes. They did leave, they dragged themselves into their clothes and out of the hut. Edvin arrived back in camp alone, having left her to make her own way to her home while he returned to the others.  


Nothing was the same after that. Edvin was not the first Heron to fall in love away from home, that was Stig and it had ended poorly for him. He probably wouldn’t be the last, either. No one ever noticed Edvin. That was part of the reason she was so special. Even now, after so long among the Herons, Edvin knew he was still only average in so many ways, he was still tormented by a childhood of being accidentally overlooked. After so long, someone saw him. She saw more in him than anyone ever had. And he loved her for it. In classic Edvin fashion, no one noticed it happening until it had already happened. Thorn realised it first, when he looked at the two and saw what no one else had. It alarmed him to realise this had been under his nose the whole time and he’d completely missed it. Lydia suspected something next and said as much to Hal. From there the thought spread through the group and soon they wondered how they’d ever missed it. As time went on they couldn’t look away from the pair, couldn’t ignore the way they stared at each other. They knew this was different, this was real. And they couldn’t allow themselves to think about when winter ended. They took it upon themselves to invite the girl around more often and to manufacture reasons for them to be alone, since Edvin wasn’t like Stig and he wasn’t as comfortable with letting them watch him fall in love. But after all the carefully provided moments alone it was by the fire in the evenings that the two were best, as she helped him cook dinner with a smile on her lips and a laugh in her voice.  


Then the fire happened. The real fire, the big one. The one that changed it all and defined who they became. The raiders came back with vengeance on their minds and torches in their hands. It was the middle of the night and they slipped into the village, lighting torches and hurling them into the houses of the unsuspecting sleeping villagers. The houses went up horrifically quickly, the smoke drifting through the night and reaching the camp of the Herons. Jesper smelt it first, nose twitching in his sleep as he recognised the smell of burning wood. Then he was bolt upright and looking at the air, full of a thin veil of smoke drifting from the village. He woke everyone up within seconds and within a couple of minutes the Herons were running through the dark woods with buckets. They did what they could put out the fires, but when Edvin realised he couldn’t see her he panicked. He asked everyone, but his lover was nowhere to be found. Her family thought she’d escaped but they were wrong, Edvin heard her screaming for help and he screamed back at her. She cried out his name and he dived into the fire, despite the others telling him not to, begging him to think a moment. There was no thinking as far as Edvin was concerned, he just had to get her out. She was unconscious by the time he reached her, trapped by beams she couldn’t move and burned down one side where she’d been caught by falling timbers. She may not have been able to move the timbers but, to save the girl he loved, Edvin could have moved a mountain. He freed her, picked her up and staggered through flame to get her out. He’d scar from the burns on his legs and the ones on his left shoulder, which happened to be the side she was burnt on too. But his burns were minor compared to her condition, and nothing when saving her life was the reward. She’d inhaled too much smoke, she was barely breathing, but Edvin proved then and there that he truly was brilliant. He got her away, got her to breathe in as deeply as she could and anticipated the coughing and the vomiting that followed. The village was burning around them, but he barely noticed as he nursed her to life.  


The burns scarred her, and Hal knew Edvin would count them among his greatest failures. He may have saved her life, but he could never stop wondering if he could have saved her that pain if he’d just been faster. He sat by her bedside until she was well enough to be out and about and there was no denying to anyone anymore that he loved her, or that she loved him, considering she insisted on kissing the burns on his shoulder whenever they hurt him and kissing the sadness off his face when he saw how she hurt too. The scars would fade and the ones down her neck and face would one day be covered with the hair she allowed to fall over her cheek. But she stayed away from fires, sitting further back from the campfire in the evenings. She kept helping Edvin cook but she chopped and prepared, he used the heat, and then they would sit back from the fire together, Edvin comforting her when the flames snapped, and she remembered those flames being all around her. The others tried not to notice how he whispered in her ear, tried not to hear the words he spoke to her, but sometimes they couldn’t help but notice his mouth form words of love, or how she mouthed them back at him. But as winter began to lift they became fearful of what might happen.  


When Hal finally announced they would begin preparing to leave he’d already delayed it some days, but they had families to get back to, families who probably feared they were dead, and he couldn’t justify staying any longer. No one knew what Edvin would do. Some of them thought he would stay, others thought the girl might come, no one predicted what did happen. When Hal made his announcement they would be leaving in three days’ time he tried to avoid Edvin’s gaze. The cook and medic hid his real feelings from his face, reported to Hal what would need doing, and then he disappeared. He didn’t reappear until midday the next day. He was alone. He’d been with her, hiding in their secret cabin and trying to process the idea of saying goodbye. He couldn’t leave the Herons and she wouldn’t ask him to, it was who and what he was and she wouldn’t try and change that. But she wouldn’t leave her family, either. She had only one sibling, a younger sister, and her family relied on the help she gave them. Everyone had known from the start that someone would end up hurting when winter ended, no one predicted it would be the couple who made the sacrifice. Edvin helped with the preparations the rest of that day and the day after. He attended the farewell party the village threw, where she was in the dress she’d worn to the first party the Herons had been to, but this time her hair was just as wind-tousled as usual and she and Edvin slipped away before the party ended, heading up to their cabin and spending one last night together. They lit a tiny fire in the fireplace and they felt like the world couldn’t touch them as the wind swirled around their hut and they hid inside from the reality tomorrow would bring.  


When dawn came the Herons didn’t know if Edvin would be coming, but he arrived shortly after first light, hand tightly grasping hers, showing just how scared he was to let go. He did let go, but only so that he could cling to her on the shore and whisper all sorts of things the others couldn’t hear. They stayed like that for a long time, too long, perhaps, but finally Edvin let go. They would never have said enough so they ended it while they could. The campfire, the one that had burned almost continuously since they’d arrived, was doused, and the two of them watched it in agony. The steam that rose stung their eyes, but not as much as the tears that they tried to fight back. They watched the final preparations with hands grasping, but finally everything was set and everyone was ready to go. Edvin kissed her one last time but neither said anything. He let her hand go, left her standing there in yesterday’s dress with the wind in her hair and the remains of the campfire at her feet.  


The crew didn’t try to make things better because they knew they couldn’t. Stig spent long hours sat with Edvin, not knowing how it felt to choose to leave the one you love but knowing how it felt to not have them anymore. Edvin appreciated the company. They felt their debt to him keenly, the weight of what he’d given up for his brotherband was heavy. His sacrifice burned. In time he seemed better, although they doubted he’d ever be the same, and weeks, months after they returned home they’d still find him sitting in silence and thinking of her.  


It was a little over a year later when things changed again. They were installing Hal’s newest experiment, the entire crew a busy swarm on the little ship. Stefan noticed first but he struggled to believe his eyes as he watched a familiar figure snaking her way through the crowded dock with more urgency than anyone else there, making a beeline for the little ship. There was no denying who it was as she grew closer and Stefan was calling, then shouting Edvin’s name, barely able to communicate. He couldn’t say what he’d seen, was too excited, but next to him Lydia said a name and it tugged at Edvin’s heart. She said it again. Then Stig roughly grabbed his arm and turned him around. Only then did Edvin see her, openly running now, and he took a beat to make sure she was real before he yelled her name, leaping from the ship and sprinting the short space of ground between them, scooping her into his arms and clinging to her. She smelt like earth and salt and smoke and something he could never place but which was clearly with her always because it was so familiar it made him cry as he breathed it in, months of agony forcing their way to the surface as he held her and remembered what it felt like. He smelt like salt, too, and smoke, and tar, but also old timbers and shirts that needed washing and the faintest hint of soap that suggested he did know how to bathe and the feeling of his arms so solidly around her and his tears on her shoulder made the girl weep, too. He didn’t ask what she was doing there because he doubted he could speak, anyway once he pulled away from her shoulder his mouth was a bit busy kissing her. There was no fire this time, no campfire, bonfire, fireplace or burning buildings, there was only sea and dock and people. She looked so completely out of place there, like someone had plucked up this memory that was always on his mind and dropped it in front of him. She looked exactly as he remembered her, the same old scuffed boots she always wore, the same battered woollen vest over a white shirt, the same wind still in her hair, slightly more tamed now so she could hide the red scars that seemed to have refused to fade. But she was different, too, older, even though it had only been a year. The pain he’d felt had been hers, too, and the separation had aged them both. But in each other’s company again the past year melted away.  


It had been a flood in the end, the reason she was there. Her island had flooded and, after the raiders and the fire the months before, she had seen a chance to change things. She convinced her family it wasn’t safe to stay there, things would just keep going wrong and, with their house destroyed a second time, there would never been a better time to leave it all behind. There were more opportunities for her and her sister in somewhere like Hallasholme. She’d moved her whole family, her whole life, across the ocean for him. The gratitude he felt to her for that was so immense he doubted he’d ever have the words or actions to express it. She didn’t need his gratitude, however, she just wanted to be with him. And she was, every second of every day for weeks, refusing to leave his side for fear she’d lose him again. The Herons, his family, hers, they all saw what the sacrifice the couple had made for them meant. They knew it had hurt, but seeing the impact of reunion proved the true, deep effect it had had. But that didn’t seem to matter, not anymore. They cooked together, they knitted together, they went for walks in the woods, somehow they were exactly as they had been before, as though the location didn’t change for one moment how they were together.  


Literally no one was surprised when he asked her to marry him, or when she said yes. He did it in the evening, in his home as they ate together, just the two of them, and the fire cracked in the fireplace. The flames were in her eyes, the wind somehow still in her hair even though they were inside, proving that part of her was always wild, and he could see the scars down her cheek and neck peeking through the hair when she laughed. He never even worried about asking her, never even considered the idea of her saying no, he pulled out the ring he’d bought earlier and knelt on the floor, on the rug she’d made just for him. She wasn’t alarmed, she didn’t make a fuss, she just smiled at him with infinite fondness, admiring the glow in his hair from the flames and the one on his cheeks from love and knowing exactly what she would say when he was done.  
They married, something neither had allowed themselves to think about before, and it was beautiful. The ceremony was traditional with minimum frills, the party afterwards was exactly as they’d hoped. They had a bonfire and music and dancing. They barely knew the dances but it didn’t matter as they pranced rings around the flames with skin pink from laughter and drink and happiness and wind mussing up everyone’s carefully constructed hair dos. She’d never looked more beautiful, Edvin thought, with her hair wild and her face aching from smiles and her dress suiting her perfectly. Her scars were visible as she danced and she didn’t seem to care, he cared even less. They were a mark of what they’d been through, how things had changed, how they’d been shaped. Edvin’s shirt wasn’t quite as tidy as it had been, not quite as tightly fastened, and the fading scars on his shoulder, the ones he’d got from saving her, were visible sometimes, visible to her at least as the two danced together. They had matching scars, matching reminders of the past. Fire tattoos, they had begun to call them.  


Fire had been an important feature of their relationship. It had shaped it, defined it almost. Fire had drawn them together, it had changed them and marked them. It had become them. And, no matter how long they were together, Edvin always pictured her how she looked that first night when she sat in the sand by the fire and talked with the Herons, hair a wind-swept mess, the fire making it seem to be a deep bronze rather than its usual brown, her skin a glowing pink and eyes always laughing with flames reflected in their depths.


End file.
